Monday, 21 May 2012

Modulation, AM or FM? Many (many!) years ago
, I was a telephone engineer in the UK, and went to college to learn my craft.
One afternoon we learnt about radio and what was meant by AM and FM - Amplitude
Modulation and Frequency Modulation. What I don't remember is the why and how
of AM and FM, and to be honest I now leave it to the radio experts to ponder
such things!

These days, modulation
is to do with music for me. A lot of jazz is based on the use of 'standards'
that is songs written by composers originally for the theatre, tin pan alley or
the hit parade and then taken by us jazzers to make our own by improvising
around these wonderful pieces.

Take 'How about you'
for example, a great standard to jazz around. The lyrics of the first bit go:

I like New York in
June,

how about you?

I like a Gershwin
tune,

how about you?

I love a fireside

when a storm is due.
I like potato chips,

moonlight and motor
trips,

how about you?

Let's say we're
playing the piece in the key of F (one flat) a favourite for this piece.

Every thing goes
alright, with straight forward chords until we come to "I like potato
chips, moonlight and motor trips, how about you?"

On the face of it we
see some strange chords for the key of F, until realise, that bit is in fact in
a different key, the key of A (three sharps) in this case. What has happened is to the piece has
modulated into a new key, for a bit. As the piece goes on it goes back to the key of F and
all is well again!

What the jazzer has to
do in fact, is to recognise these temporary key changes, or modulations,
because the jazzer will use different scales to solo (extemporise) around that
modulated bit. The important thing to remember is that modulation is only a temporary
change of key within the piece - and that's because the composer has written it in, and not a complete key
change. If you changed the key to of the whole piece to G (one sharp) for example,the
modulation as above would now be in the key of B (5 sharps)!

Modulations within
pieces make them sound really cool, as I sometimes think that pieces that don't
modulate seem to go nowhere! The same of course is true in classical music,
where modulations are all over the place!

So to get to grips
with modulation and how it affects you as a jazzer, go on a Jazz Workshop and
all will be revealed

Thursday, 17 May 2012

Jazz WorkshopJug a tea? No just swing please!
One of the main things that jazzers need to develop is being able to play in swing time.This is all about the eighth notes or quavers as we call them in the UK. If you have eight quavers in a bar, then when you play them as in classical music, all the notes sound the same length - no problem there - until you want to 'swing' them.What does that mean? Well, when you listen to a piece of jazz in swing, listen to the drummer playing the high hat cymbal. It should be easy to hear because you'll hear the rythmn 'jug-a-tea'.The drummer will be playing - jug-a-tea, jug-a-tea, jug-a-tea etc. (Cue for old joke, when playing latin he will play 'jug-a-coffee' instead!)How can aspiring players find the swing in the rythmn. One method is to imagine a bar full not of eight quaver, but twelve of them in four groups of three.What you've now got of course is 12/8 time signature, and it sounds like:-da da da - da da da - da da da - da da da you can count all 12 beats or the four groups of three - (the basis of compound time signatures)Now we're nearly beginning to swing, because if you take out the middle one of each of three, and replace them with rests -silence- you getda (rest) da, da (rest) da, da (rest) da, da (rest) da etc. Try saying that aloud and you'll be getting a 'shuffle' beat, often used in 60's pop music.Squeeze the two da's in a bar together and you'll be swinging! Its much easier to hear than to explain, so book yourself onto a jazz workshop if you want to be a real swinger!
Happy Jazzing Peter WillsonButlers Jazz Workshop, France August 13th -17th 2012Ring 01323 833770 (UK)+44 1323 833770 (International)

One of the main things that jazzers need to develop is being able to play in swing time.

This is all about the eighth notes or quavers as we call them in the UK. If you have eight quavers in a bar, then when you play them as in classical music, all the notes sound the same length - no problem there - until you want to 'swing' them.

What does that mean? Well, when you listen to a piece of jazz in swing, listen to the drummer playing the high hat cymbal. It should be easy to hear because you'll hear the rythmn 'jug-a-tea'.

The drummer will be playing - jug-a-tea, jug-a-tea, jug-a-tea etc.

(Cue for old joke, when playing latin he will play 'jug-a-coffee' instead!)

How can aspiring players find the swing in the rythmn. One method is to imagine a bar full not of eight quaver, but twelve of them in four groups of three.

What you've now got of course is 12/8 time signature, and it sounds like:-

Tuesday, 8 May 2012

This one's for pianists in the main, but other instruments keep on reading as you will see where we as the pianists fit in to jazz!

Still with us? Great!

This is where I blow the pianist's trumpet (if that's possible!) by saying that we keyboard players when playing a solo piece (i.e. on our own, not as a solo in an ensemble) are doing not one, not two but three things simultaneously!

What a feat I hear you cry - but what are those three things?

First is the melody (or improvisation/solo in jazz), second is the bass line and third is filling the middle bit with chords!

How is this possible? Well the right bit of the right hand usually plays the melody, the left bit of the left hand plays the bass line and the middle bits of the left and right hand fill in with the chords, and sometimes a countermelody!

Now with my pupils I get them to understand what a bass line is, and how bass players work. To me, the bass is king - its the fundamental for all jazz and in fact pretty much all music - without the bass, you ain't got a band!

Back to pianists. When a pupil wants to learn a new piece, instead of getting them to play a melody line in the right hand with chords in the left (Oh, how amateur that can sound!) I get them to play the melody in the right, and the bass line only in the left. The idea is , once they can make that sound good, add the chords as above (the voicing of the chord is very important here) and voila, you have a great solo jazz piece for piano!

All of this, I must say, will take new pianists quite a little time to master, but one way to progress things is to go on a jazz workshop where you will find tutors and players all very eager to help the new pianist along, and help them to get to grips with bass lines.

Saturday, 5 May 2012

In an earlier post I wrote about how the history of jazz coincides almost entirely with the history of recorded music. In fact, the earliest recordings of the human voice, that could be played back and listened to, was much earlier than the first recordings of jazz.

It seems that the Original Dixieland Jazz Band made its first recording in 1917, so anybody who wanted to study jazz had the option from that time, to listen many times to hear and imitate the music being played.

And of course, a major way of learning jazz for any instrument, is to do just that!

To be a good jazz musician, I maintain, is to be a good jazz listener. Anybody who wants to play music, any music, needs to listen to the great players of that music.

How do you listen to jazz? Well if you want to do some serious study of a piece by listening, I think you have to listen to that piece more than once, more than twice, in fact, to get a feel for that piece, one has to listen to that one track many times.

There have been many books and articles with some good information about listening to jazz, many can be found on the web, but the following might prove helpful to a keen listener.

So who are the great players of your chosen instrument?

You can't learn to play jazz on any instrument, till you know of the players who are the greatest players of that instrument! That seems obvious to me, but when I've asked some of my pupils in the past who are the great jazz pianists, they said they didn't know of any!

How can you play an instrument well if you don't know who are the greatest players of that instrument?

First select a track, from one of the great players you admire, and after selecting the track, listen to the track as a whole, and think what it is that makes you want to listen to that track. Is it the melody, the chord structure, the way the performer plays or the the sheer excitement you get from the performance?

If you are not excited by the track, listen and work on another one because if you get bored it makes the whole exercise much more difficult.

As soon as you can, after listening to the track for a few times, go to your instrument and see if you can play some of the phrases you hear.

You need to now get some understanding of how that piece works, and the way that the performer has put it together. The best way to do this, is to go to a jazz workshop and the whole listening process will be made clear, so you can start on the road to be a great jazz player yourself!

Has it struck you as strange the arrangements of the notes on a piano keyboard?

Why are there 7 white notes and 5 black in an octave?

The answer ( very simplified ) is that the white notes came first. There were no pianos back in the pre Bach days, the main instrument that musical theory developed around was the organ (in churches and monasteries mainly, they had the money!) and the very early organs had white notes only.

Why only white notes - the music of the church then (with its roots in Ancient Greek music no less) was based around the 'modes' and the white notes have all seven. The black notes came later;(but they caused a tuning problem which JS Bach and his contemporaries began to solve with equal temperament tuning: thus he published the Well Tempered Clavier, 48 preludes and fugues 2 in each major key and 2 in each minor, published 24 at a time!, a huge issue well outside the scope of this blog - but fascinating all the same. I maintain that had Bach been alive today, he would almost certainly been a jazzman!)

Back to the white notes. If you start from C and play D,E,F,G,A B and (C) you are playing the major scale of C. You are also playing the Ionian mode.

Play from D E F G A B C (D) you've got the Dorian mode. Play around those notes, and you will find a very 'churchy' sound - no accident

E F G A B C D (E) Phrygian mode

F G A B C D E (F) Lydian mode

G A B C D E F (G) Mixolydian mode

A B C D E F G (A) Aeolian mode

B C D E F G A (B) Locrian mode

Or as a jazzplayer might say Mode 1,2 3,4 5 6 and 7 !

The important thing when playing modes is the hear the 'home' note, where does the scale want to end. Whatever note that is, that is the mode you are playing in!

All twelve notes in the octave can be the starting point for modes, not just the white notes and of course to the jazzer, modes can be useful, because they can be a fantastic framework for improvisation. (Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans etc etc)

To progress further down the modal route go on a jazz workshop and you will end up in the mode for jazz!

Wednesday, 2 May 2012

I don't know if it still happens but when going to the barbers, many years ago (when I had hair!), after the main event, the chap turned round and said in my ear "anything extra sir?".

Ah happy uncomplicated days!

But what about adding extras to your jazz music? I'm talking about intros and endings.

My pupils, when working on a jazz piece, would often play me the tune straight from the first bar, and would finish it at at the end of the last bar, as one might when playing a classical piece of music (and that's of course because usually the classical composer has written any intros and endings into the piece already).

With jazz however, generally you are playing your own interpretation of a number, and you as a jazz player are the arranger (especially if you are the keyboard or guitar player).

So the jazz player usually 'sets up' the piece with an intro, and finishes it with an ending.

There are many techniques in improvising an intro, a favourite of mine is to play a selection of chords - (one might begin by trying chord I VI II and V) out of time, and when you get to the main melody, introduce the pulse (the beat) and away you go. You might want to start the intro in a different key and go into the main melody by using the II V sequence into the main key (George Shearing on Let There be Love). With latin numbers, you might want to set up the rythmn first and go into the main melody after 8 bars.

Endings too are a constant challenge and delight. From the classic ' Count Basie' ending (listen to recordings of the great man's band and see how he ends his numbers) to a smooth progression of chords that add more enjoyment to the performance. (Diana Kralls endings for instance).

The ideas of starting and ending a number are literally endless. How then do you know what to do?

The answer of course is always the same, you listen a lot to recordings of the great jazzers, see what they do, copy it and then use their ideas added to your own to formulate some really great intros and endings. By going on a jazz workshop, you will find that these techniques will be discussed in some detail, making you in the end , the complete jazz player with all the extras!